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Karolson & Hobshack

The Phelps Telegraph Machine (pictured) was at that time in widespread use throughout North America. Oskar Karolson, an operator in rural Ontario, a young-to-middling man of Jewish-Polish extraction with a love of puzzles, who taught the wheat farmers’ children mathematics and piano, had had a new Phelps delivered to his remote station sometime early in 1877. The telegraph traffic of dairymen and the odd dentist was low, however, and Oskar had little to do. In his boredom, he reached out across the wires.

Curiously, when the corresponding Phelps Machine’s keys were depressed, a melancholy little melody emerged. The song echoed through Baxter Hobshack’s office, and through trial and error, the asthmatic operator managed to return:

“I am cming. Head East in the evening.”

Thus began the game of Karolson and Hobshack, in which Hobshack was led through a simple, charming world of Karolson’s imagination.